We shed light on industrial structure of the economic system in Japan by combining visualization technique and community analysis in this and an accompanying paper. Here we focus on visualization of a production network comprising submillion nodes (firms) and three million links (transaction relations). A network structure is optimized through molecular dynamics simulation with a spring-electrical model in a three-dimensional space. The lowest-energy state in the model, corresponding to a crystalline state in a physical system, is expected to give a comprehensible view on the network. Then we discuss how firms are distributed in the optimized network structure by classifying them according to sectors, sizes or regions. The distributions of firms reflect characteristics of individual classifications. Also propagation of the shock due to a recent economic scandal over the network is visualized. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.